I was halfway to dozing when Penny’s voice brought me back to full wakefulness. I blinked against the firelight to see him propped up on one elbow beside me, bare-chested and damp from our shared bath. His left hand followed the shapes of the muscles of my torso, fingertips skimming over my skin and chasing sleep further and further away.
My breath caught when he leaned in, sparking memories of an hour before when he’d had more than his hands all over me. He’d worn me out, but he was clearly still wide awake. Not that I minded the attention; I relished it and, when his lips traced up the side of my neck, I tipped my head aside to give him better access.
“What?” I asked, already distracted.
“Sunflowers,” he murmured against the shell of my ear. The fingers of his right hand curled under the back of my neck to hold me in place as his kisses trailed across my cheek. A lock of hair slipped from behind his ear and brushed across the tip of my nose.
I reached up to rub away the sneeze that threatened, then tucked the offending strands back. “What about them?”
“We grow them on the farm. Mostly for looks, but Mother also sells the seeds to the local weaver to make dyes. Every summer they come up, taller than you are. A whole wall of them.”
“Mm.” My eyes slid closed as his lips met mine in a soft, savoring kiss.
After a moment, he pulled back. “When we get married,” he said, his tone wistful, “that’s where I want to do it. Surrounded by sunflowers.”
Warmth swelled in my chest and choked off any immediate response I might have given. It still caught me off guard how freely and readily Penny thought about our future together. For so long, I hadn’t had a future worth imagining, so I was out of practice. I’d been alone and had expected to remain so. Now, it wasn’t hard to picture the day I’d make Penny my husband: in the presence of family, against a backdrop of sunflowers that could never compare to the brightness of the man who cherished me as much as I cherished him.
“I would like that,” I said softly.
He smiled and rubbed his nose against mine. “I bet their reflection will turn your eyes gold like the sunlight always does.”
I grinned through his next kiss and cupped the nape of his neck with my palm.
“You’re precious, Pen. I’ll never understand why no other man got to you before I did.”
Blush tinted Penny’s cheeks, and he ducked his head. “I was still practicing how to properly ensnare a man. Think I’ve got it now, though.” He looked up at me through his lashes. “Rosie says you’re enchanted with me.”
I stroked the back of his head with my thumb. “Probably because I am.”
It was his turn to grin, and he sank down so he could drape himself over me and nuzzle along my jaw. “Lucky me.”
The gesture was familiar by now. I could always count on Penny chasing the smell of my shave oil after a bath. I enjoyed it enough that I considered shaving twice a day just to encourage him to do it more often.
“This must be what Thoma was talking about.”
“What do you mean?” Penny didn’t pause in his attentions, instead graduating from nuzzles to tiny kisses.
It was an effort to focus on conversation with his weight pressing me into the mattress and his fingers trailing down my sides, leaving little fires in their wake. “He caught me when I was finishing up my deliveries,” I said as I dragged my attention away from where Penny's hands were headed. “Wanted to apologize for running out on dinner. He said it was hard to watch us together.”
Penny paused and pushed up to meet my eyes. “I spent the whole time whining about Merrick. You even told me so. Multiple times.”
I slid my arm around his waist to keep him close. I didn’t want to make him feel bad, so I didn’t tell him that Thoma also said the mention of Anders made him think about the day in the square. He avoided seeing most of the skinning, but he couldn’t get the image of Anders holding Reimond’s disembodied heart out of his mind. It was all he dreamed about for weeks. Considering I still had nightmares about Penny dying during the third Oath, I knew how he felt.
“I imagine it’s even easy to miss the bickering when someone’s gone,” I said.
Penny’s lips pressed a grim line, and he nodded.
“He wanted me to pass the apology on to you,” I added. “He feels awful about it, but he hasn’t been up to stopping by the forge to talk and wanted to make sure you knew.” I brushed thedamp hair back from Penny’s face. “He reiterated that the third Oath was all wrong, and it never should have been allowed to happen. It’s strange to hear other people talk about the Bone Men like that. There was a time when no one would have even dared whisper such things in Ashpoint.”
Penny shifted, restless and buzzing despite the late hour and our long day. I could tell there was something on his mind. Judging by the way he avoided my eyes, he was working up the nerve to say it.
He finally settled with his head tucked beneath my chin and drew a deep breath.
“Thoma’s not the only one who thinks that way,” he said. “Rosie does too. Apparently, so do a lot of other people.”
“How do you know that?”
He traced down the grid of my abdomen with his fingertip. “Rosie told me about the night she talked to you in the orchard when she said that we should all leave. I told her we couldn’t. And then I…”
